Reflective practice in a team new to agile

Reflection is an active process whereby a professional can gain an understanding of how historical, social, cultural and personal experiences have contributed to professional knowledge and practice.

In examining the new use of agile in projects run by a major cement manufacturer, Ahmad Alshehri discovered how learning through reflection led to some positive outcomes.

The project was to develop and deploy a comprehensive new load management system including the equipment and software logic automation at the manufacturer using the agile methodology and approach to project management.

Implementing agile involved:

Analysis of the existing project management approach

Responsibilities assigned to staff and vendor teams to develop a project management system based on agile to meet the specific future needs of the company

Training of staff on agile and operation of the load management system within the Power House department

The implementation of new logic metrics and measures to validate the success of the new methodology

The project incorporated reflective practice in the form of brainstorming sessions and fortnightly meetings arranged by the project team to discuss the status of the project. These ‘project review meetings’ covered success so far, time elapsed by a project iteration, what could be improved, and how to achieve more success in the future/next project objective. These meetings purely represent social learning as well as experiential learning.

Some of the benefits achieved through reflective practice were:

Increased collaboration and trust among staff and vendor project teams

Increased work performance due to effective reflection

No loopholes left unattended during the project

Increased effective and detailed briefing on the project

‘Learning Through Reflective Practice While Deploying a Load Management System In a Famous Cement Industry’ [PDF] by Ahmad Alshehri details the lessons learnt through reflective practice and explores how learning through reflection could have further improved the outcome of this project and would improve future projects.